Элизабет Бир - Ancestral Night

“Acknowledging,” Singer answered. “We’re hot. I’m on it.”

I could have mentioned that it was rightminding which made that basic level of altruism possible; that we were hierarchal creatures with a tendency toward magical and unrealistic thinking, left to our own devices. That evolution had left us with a number of sophipathologies intrinsic to our intellectual makeup, and that to survive as a society we intervened in those failures to grasp reality in order to make our people, in general, more amenable to working for a commonweal.

Clade Light, really.

One of the things the Freeporters objected to.

Singer said, “These people made up a bad government. It’s imposed, not emergent. You won’t like it.”

“Clades are imposed.” We still had time to kill. That’s the problem with space: even scary things can take a really long time to happen. “Rightminding is imposed.”

“There’s agreeing to live by the obligations and laws of a civilization in order to enjoy its common protections, and then there’s having obligations and laws forced upon you.”

“I’m not going to move here,” I said. “Just eat something with fresh spices in it. Besides, Downthehatch is a Synarche system. It can’t be that tyrannical. And if we had a choice about coming here, we wouldn’t be. Especially with a pirate ship in dock.”

“They might as well be Republic pirates,” Connla teased.

“They might as well be,” Singer agreed darkly. Which seemed a little on-the-nose, given that there was, in fact, a pirate ship in dock.

We were spiraling close to the station. Close enough that I wished they would stop arguing and fly the damn tug. I wondered what we looked like coming in, with our scorched and empty derrick housings and our hastily patched hull.

I hoped—again—that the pirates weren’t looking.

“We’re going to have to report the pirates,” Singer said unhappily. “To a stationmaster who is giving them berth space.”

Maybe the stationmaster doesn’t know , I almost said, and swallowed it. One of the problems with AIs grown from personality seeds is that sometimes they’re just as reactive and weird as any human. Singer was acting out because he was worried.

Of course the stationmaster knew. Which meant we needed to find another way to make sure the information made it back to the Core.

Singer feathered his engines. The ship luffed, hesitated, glided. Nudged the docking ring and—relative to the station—stopped. Singer caught the hook and—elegant, perfect, seamless, with no sense of acceleration—the station appeared to stop rotating, and the sun beneath the ship began to whirl instead. A locking click reverberated through the hull, followed by the hiss of exchanging atmosphere.

I worked my jaw as my ears popped painfully. My body, suddenly, weighed a ton. It was only quarter gravity, but it felt like somebody had tied sacks of bolts and washers to all of my limbs.

“Your fresh air, Connla,” Singer said dryly. “Enjoy breathing it in freedom for as long as you can. I’ll be arguing with the local arm of the Synarche for an extension on my service start date. Hopefully I’ll still be here when you return.”

I looked down at my star-webbed hands. We could make it home without Singer; flying an established space lane wasn’t hard , not for a pilot as good as Connla. I wouldn’t trust any expert system we found out here in the margins, anyway.

“Nanocream,” I asked out loud. “Do we have any?”

Singer said, “I can fab you some. There was a bit ready-made in first aid stores, but I’m afraid it’s expired.”

I smeared the stuff on, watched it color-match my skin. It looked mostly okay, but it was missing the subtle shadings of red-brown and cocoa that my natural complexion had, the centimeter-by-centimeter color variation.

I looked flat. A little plastic.

Ill. Or like an android.

Well, no offense to any androids, but that was about how I felt, as well.

SHALL I COMPARE THEE TOa docking ring? Thou art more beautiful and more temperate, though that’s not really hard when you’re talking about an airlock whose external temperature is measured on the low end of kelvins. On the other hand, I’m not sure I could have been happier with anything or felt more raw, unfettered love than I did for that docking ring, right then. Free and with my afthands on metal, I stretched against the rotational acceleration and sighed.

I love Singer; don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t trade my life for any crowded station existence, and most definitely not for anything on the downside. How do people live down wells? But it was good to get away from him and Connla—for just a few hours. There’s nothing like being annoyed by different sentiences to make you really appreciate your own.

Not that Downthehatch Station had a lot to recommend it. The ox section smelled of chlorine, strong enough to smart in my sinuses. The chlorine section probably stank of oxygen, I was willing to bet, because nothing makes two mutually bioincompatible life-forms feel more relaxed and at home than breathing trace quantities of each other’s poison.

Some stations, you walk out of the docking ring—okay, you climb up through it, usually, though on this one we had docked alongside the axis of spin, which is not as sturdy a connection but you don’t have to go up a ladder to get out—and there are restaurants, nightlife, trade shops, and tourist attractions. Showers and brothels and the usual amenities of any port.

On some others, you’re lucky if there’s a bathroom.

This was one of the latter. Not even a dive bar in sight, just a long dingy curve of corridor with fibrous gray carpeting institutionalizing it further. It had windows, at least, and as I looked to my left I had the rare pleasure of a glimpse of Singer from the outside, visible through the ports. Chalk another small human convenience up to side-by-side docking.

I pulled my screen out of my pocket and checked directions to the stationmaster’s office. Technically we did not have to present in person, having received clearances—but there was the little matter of the criminal issues to report, and the social capital therefrom to negotiate. Connla and I had drawn lots, and it had fallen to me to deal with strangers.

Again.

I’m pretty sure he cheats. Especially since, as I was pulling my station shoes on to cushion my poor afthands, he had smiled cheerily and said, “It’ll be good for you to get out and meet some people!”

Then he had announced his intention to go find the local strategy games club and see if he could get laid, find a chess partner, or both. So yeah, I’m pretty sure he cheats. I had sighed, and reminded him to turn his conscience and risk-assessment back on, and told Singer not to print him any station shoes unless he did.

I can cheat too, on occasion.

The connecting corridor from the docking ring spiraled me into a main hallway after a dozen steps or so, coming in from the side to make it easy to merge with the flow of traffic. This was where all the people were. A diverse group—I spotted a lot of humans, some of whom side-eyed me just enough to let me know they’d spotted the nanoskin and wondered if I was an overly made-up human or an AI out for a stroll.

There’s always somebody who feels like they have the right to judge.

But there was also a selection of other ox-type systers, including some small furry ones, some caterpillar-like ones, a couple of examples of a photosynthetic species that were particularly welcome on stations because they respirated using carbon dioxide, and one member of an elephantine, red-skinned species whose name was unpronounceable to Terrans. We called them Thunderbys, and this one’s hulking frame strained the capacity of the corridor.